


Curveball

by piranabo



Category: Hit the Floor (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5958196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piranabo/pseuds/piranabo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the Devil's playoff-qualifying match, Zero makes a decision. Written before the 2/8 episode. Unbeta'd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curveball

Jelena and Terrence not trading Derek isn’t the worst part of Zero’s day, but it’s definitely helping. In the past twenty-four hours, the board fired Lionel as Devils manager and put media power-couple “Telena” in her place. A management shift is the last thing the team needs before the playoff qualifier tomorrow, but Terrence had landed another sponsor from God-knows-where and sealed the deal a month earlier than planned. After the debacle became public, Jelena approached Zero one-on-one. There is going to be a trade, he learned, but it isn’t going to be for Derek. It’s going to be for Zero.

“Though really,” Jelena says, drumming her manicured nails against the leather folder in her hands. “I doubt any team is going to want you after they find out about the drugs.”

“What drugs?”

Papers from the folder ruffle as Jelena extracts a black-and-white still-frame of Zero surrounded by scanty woma, a straw up his nose and a fat line of coke resting on a plumpy redhead’s stomach. Zero remembers that party—the picture is surprisingly accurate—except for one detail. As he looks at the photo, he reaches into his pocket and presses the record button on his phone. Meanwhile, he turns to Jelena and says:

“You photoshopped it. There wasn’t coke at that gig. Alcohol only. Part of the club’s policy.”

“And I’m sure you’ll have more than enough resources to hire a legal team to prove that once the Devils cut you off. And show that the witnesses we’ve hired are all lying. Oh, wait. No, I don’t think you will. Face it, Zero, you’ve lost. No buzzer-beaters, no overtimes. Just,” she pauses before smacking her lips together and finishing sweetly, “Failure.”

“You’re not getting away with this. We had a deal.”

Jelena shakes her head. “And now we don’t have a deal. Goodbye, Zero. Give me a call when you’ve packed your things. After the game tomorrow, I think it’d be in both of our best interests if we never crossed paths again.” Then Jelena walks past him like she hasn’t just ruined Zero’s life.

Jude is going to pick up the phone. That much is obvious. With a game as big as tomorrow’s imminent, there’s no chance he won’t. Still, Zero calls three times with no answer. By the fourth attempt, he changes tactics, dialing Lionel’s cell instead. A brief conversation later, Lionel mentions Jude’s whereabouts casually, and Zero hangs up on her on the spot.

Three knocks, loud and abrasive. When the door opens and Jude Kincade is on the other side, typical suit traded for a pair of fitted khakis and a white button-down, Zero almost forgets why he came there. Almost.

“Jelena and Terrence are firing me over a fake drug scandal. Tomorrow.”

“Shit.”

“I know.” Zero moves to step into Jude’s apartment, and Jude blocks him, closing the door slightly. “I have a recording of Jelena saying it’s her doing, sort of, but I need to know what moves to make to ensure everyone knows it’s Jelena who’s lying. I need you.”

“Unless she’s saying it outright, it’s a lot easier to doctrine a voice recording than a whole drug scandal. Without witnesses to back you up, the recording’s useless.” Jude pauses. “And I don’t want you in here.”

Zero doesn’t fight the eye-roll that comes over him.

“We’ve been here before, Jude. You play hard to get; I say nice words; we both end up naked and enjoying ourselves. Let’s skip the first two steps, yeah?”

“Thought you came here for business help.”

“Could have gone to Lucas if that was all I wanted.”

“Look,” Jude says, stepping out of his apartment entirely and shutting the door so it’s just them. “I lost my job too, okay? Recently, and I don’t have a year-and-a-half of million dollar endowments and sponsorship deals to hold me over. I don’t feel sorry for you, and there’s nothing I can do to help you, so why are you here?”

“Emotional support? You’re the only one I can talk to about stuff like this. About anything, really. I trust you.” A beat. “And I miss the hell out of you and not just the sex, though as someone with considerable past-experience, I can say with certainty that you’re fantastic at it. When you take control of me? Pin me against the wall? Let me pin you? It’s the hottest thing there is.”

Jude pauses. Zero can feel Jude’s eyes grazing over his body. Then Jude steps back, further away instead of closer, and when Zero steps towards him, Jude turns away.

“I said to stay away from me.”

“Oh, come on. Consider it my going-away present.”

“A present; is that all I am to you? Some reward? I’m not here to make you feel better about yourself. You missed that chance. I loved you. I would have done anything for you; you knew that, and you still did everything in your power to step all over me. Now, I really do have nothing.”

Zero puts his hands over Jude’s shoulders so his chest is touching Jude’s back.

“You don’t have nothing,” he whispers into Jude’s ear.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do though.”

And then, for the second time that day, someone Zero thought loved him walks away. Jude disappears into his apartment, and when Zero tries the door again, he finds it’s locked. Zero waits ten minutes, then gives up, heading back to his car alone, as always.

He’s almost buckled in the car when something comes over him, a drive that makes him storm out of the car and bang on Jude’s door until he knows Jude is listening on the other side.

“It’s not easy for me either,” he yells. “I worked my whole life for this. I started on the streets. My parents gave me up, and not one of the foster homes I’d lived in ever thought I’d be anything other than nothing. Zero; that’s what they called me. You know this. My life wasn’t like yours. I had to bleed to get where I am, and I know it was tough for you with Oscar, with being an agent and being fucking amazing at it all on your own without his help, but Christ, Jude.”

That makes the door punch open, Jude’s eyes rimmed with puffy red and expression so bitter and loveless, it makes Zero recoil.

“Christ, Zero, what? I know it was hard for you. It was hard for me too. In a different way, but if you’re saying I haven’t worked my ass off—”

“I’m not. I’m just saying that it’s different.”

“How?”

Zero pauses.

“Because you never had to worry if you’d have enough to eat tomorrow.”

That makes Jude’s face drop. An inkling of warmth passes his face for a second before being steeled down with the same dead-glare as earlier.

“I’m sorry Jelena’s firing you. I’m sorry you make enemies of every person you meet. I’m sorry your childhood sucked, and I’m sorry that you think, for even one second, that what you’ve said changes anything. Maybe all those foster kids weren’t calling you Zero because they thought you’d never amount to anything. Maybe it was a counter. The number of people you have in your life who can actually stand you.”

Oh.

_Oh._

This time when Jude closes the door, Zero doesn’t fight back. He doesn’t resist. He just walks back to his car in a trance and arrives home without remembering the drive there at all. If Zero punches his pillows into a feathery mess and breaks every shot glass in his kitchen, then that’s his secret.

**

Game time. Maybe the last game ever if Jelena and Terrence have their way. Zero sees Jude on the way in, him shuffling to the bleachers awkwardly, suit-and-tie clad and incongruous sitting with the regular crowdgoers instead of in the VIP booth up top. Jude losing his job was part of the crossfire. No Kincades in the Devils. No Gideons either.

Zero plays ball, hard. He’s never gamed this well in his life, and it shows. Even Derek comments on it at a timeout in the second quarter saying, “I have no idea what you’re doing or where it’s coming from, but keep it up.” Terrence keeps his mouth shut.

During the halftime show, Zero peeks up to Jude’s seat in the stands and notices it’s empty. The game is neck-and-neck, 32-33, Devils losing. It’s not like Jude to just leave. By the end of the third quarter, he’s still not back, and Zero can feel his game slipping. Even if Jude gave him the ultimate fuck-off, Zero still wants to show him, show everyone, that he is, if nothing else, a phenomenal fucking basketball player.

Fourth quarter, ten seconds left. It’s a dead-ringer for the championship game. This time Terrence has the ball, and despite the easy lay-up Zero would have if Terrence passed, Terrence goes for the three, and the ball rolls over the rim before dropping of it to the floor. Zero is on it like lightening, grabbing the rebound and twisting, shooting it up in a spinning arc for a seamless two-pointer. The buzzer rings, and the crowd erupts in applause. The shot is good. The Devils win.

“That’s MVP right there,” Zero can hear the announcers on the floor saying and a wave of pride rushes over him as the other players sans Terrence embrace him and dump the Powerade canister over Pete. The pride, however, turns into nausea when he realizes that this may be the last time he feels like this, like something, anything. Everything he’s worked for is going to be gone tomorrow morning. Out of the corner of his eye, a flash of gray blazer alerts him to Jude’s return on the floor. Zero hadn’t seen him in the third quarter; he must have come back during the fourth.

Ignoring the reporters, Zero jogs over to him, and before he can say anything, Jude does.

“You’re not getting fired.”

Zero pauses.

“What?”

“I talked to Lionel about your contract details. The one you signed for this year was drafted with a ‘sin-forgiveness’ policy. It was one of the last things I’d done as your agent. It basically prevents anyone from firing you unless you’ve been formally convicted. After the brothel ordeal, I’d wanted your status to be secure, scandal and all. Even if they take you to court, the season will be over by the time you’d ever stand trial, and the Jelena’s evidence—which Lionel had found through some heavy snooping, so you better thank her—was shady at best. Enough for a media scandal and to ruin your career elsewhere, but not enough for a legitimate legal case. Jelena and Terrence hadn’t seen the clause earlier because I’d crammed it in the middle of your health insurance specs. No one ever reads the health insurance specs.”

Zero gawks at him.

“You’re amazing.”

“I’m good at my job. Something I don’t have at the moment.”

“You could.”

“I don’t want to be your agent.”

Zero stares at him a minute more, their brief conversation feeling ages long. The other players are embracing their loved ones, and there’s a flash in Zero’s head back to Jude telling him all he wanted was for Zero to kiss him after the big game.

“Consider this a parting gift,” Jude continues, breaking Zero’s flashback. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be really over you, but I have to try. I finally, finally, respect myself enough to do that. I’m leaving tomorrow, and my old phone number will be shut off. Clean slate.”

“Jude—”

Despite the tough words, Jude’s eyes are watering slightly.

“You played an amazing game, Gideon.” Jude says turns away, shoulders shaking, and walks towards the stadium exit. Zero wants to follow him, but reporters and miscellaneous Devil Girls are crowding him, asking questions and flirting. Zero has it. MVP, power, fame. Security. Even Derek Roman admitted he did a good job today.

Still.

“Jude!” he yells, now weaving through the passer-bys. “Wait, would you just wait?” Under the slate-gray terrace the Devils ran out of only four short quarters ago, Zero grabs Jude’s shoulder. Jude was the first to leave the scene, the terrace now empty except for the two of them and the throngs of celebrators and onlooking reporters.

Zero pulls Jude around, and when Jude opens his mouth to say something, Zero braces his hands on the sides of Jude’s face and puts their foreheads together, angling his chin so their lips are almost touching.

“What are you--?” Jude starts.

“Guess,” Zero whispers and tilts his mouth slightly, leaning forward until every cell of Jude Kincade’s lips are touching his own. Jude’s body stiffens, and Zero counts the seconds in his head—one, two, four, six—before Jude reacts, hugging his arms around Zero’s waist and kissing back back with fervor. There’s no tongue, just lips and touching and chests touching and—

When they pull away, mutually, the stadium of fifty-thousand-plus people is silent. Silent and staring. There’s a pause where Jude’s face drops into concern and terror before Zero strides up to the nearest reporter and takes his microphone.

“I like guys,” Zero says then point to Jude. “But mostly that guy.”

This time, it’s Zero who turns his back to stunned onlookers and walks away. Except, outside, rushing into his car and away from paparazzi and lurking tailgaters, there’s no Jude behind him. Jude didn’t follow him. After waiting in the limo with tinted windows for twenty minutes, Zero realizes that Jude isn’t going to either.

**

Zero’s at a private hotel with heavy security for the night. He hasn’t left the bed in hours. It was a terrible move, kissing Jude. What was he thinking? When something like that would have mattered, Zero was too afraid to do it, and when he finally does get the courage, Jude’s already over him. Part of Zero wants to scream and break things. The other part wants to moan into a pillow until his eyes stop watering like some pathetic teenager.

It’s at eleven twenty-six exactly that the media finds him. Three loud knocks pound on his door, and Zero is already making guesses in his head as to what price the security guards took to give him up. Stretching out of the burrito of blankets he’d buried himself in while aggressively trying not to check the television, internet, or anything else with news access, Zero wills himself up and checks through the peephole of the door. When he sees who he is, he opens it instantly.

“Jude—?”

Jude is on him in a second, flat. He mashes their mouths together, hard, and between every breath he says another word:

“You.”

Jude’s.

“Are.”

Lips.

“Such.”

Kissing.

“An.”

_Finally._

“Idiot. You just—no one in Basketball is out, and when Jelena releases the drug story, it’s over, contract or not. God, what’s even wrong with you? You weren’t supposed to actually—”

“You wanna fuck?”

Zero asks it because feelings are messy, and Jude is perfect, and Zero’s earned at least one thing going right for him today.

“We should talk first.”

“No talking.”

“You just outed yourself.”

“I know.”

“For me.”

Zero looks away.

“You gonna make a thing out of it, again?”

When Jude laughs, the whole room gets brighter.

“No. I’m just shocked. Part of me feels like I’m gonna wake up tomorrow on an airplane to Arizona.”

“You were gonna go to Arizona?”

“Lots of college sports there. Good job hunting.”

“Well, you could be on a plane tomorrow. I’d just be with you.”

“I don’t think Arizona would be the best place for an outed bisexual basketball player to get a job.”

“You’d be there. Makes it worth the crap.”

Jude bites his lip and smiles. Did Jude always look so fantastic when he was happy or had Zero just never seen him honestly happy before?

They don’t actually fuck that night. Zero ends up being the big spoon. Jude falls asleep first.

 

 


End file.
